Chapter 78 – The Hunter and the Hollow
The Hollow Vein was nothing like Maya or Elijah expected.
They stood at the mouth of a vast rift—a canyon carved not by nature, but by time itself. The terrain was fragmented, as if someone had taken the entire reality of the place and folded it, then burned the edges. Buildings hung sideways, half-frozen mid-collapse, and inverted trees grew from the sky like vines crawling down into nothingness.
"This place… it feels alive," Maya whispered.
"Not alive," murmured Nyx, emerging from Kael-X's shadow. "Aware."
Kael-X stepped forward, his boots crunching across fractured stones and echoes of glass. Every footstep triggered a whisper—sounds of long-lost voices, decisions made, timelines abandoned.
Elijah glanced at the scanner on his wrist. "There's no signal here. Not even gravitational readings. It's like we're walking inside a collapsed echo."
Kael-X raised a hand, halting them. His eyes narrowed.
"Someone's already here."
The others followed his gaze—and there, standing perfectly still atop an obelisk of warped obsidian, was a figure cloaked in shimmering, bronze-threaded robes. Their face was hidden beneath a helmed mask carved with runes. Their presence distorted the Hollow around them like a black hole rejecting reality.
The being slowly lifted a hand, and the atmosphere changed.
Air grew heavier. Colors dulled. Even time slowed.
"The Hunter," Umbra rasped from Kael-X's shadow. "One of the original Keepers of the Path. Bound to erase all paradoxes."
"Why is it here?" Maya whispered.
Kael-X stepped forward, cloak snapping in the voidwind. "I'm the paradox now."
The Hunter raised its arm, and a spear of spiraling chronos energy formed in its grasp.
Then it lunged.
Kael-X was already moving. His blade met the spear mid-air with a flare of white and violet light. Sparks erupted—echoes of alternate futures collided, each trying to assert dominance. The impact cracked the ground beneath them.
Elijah pulled Maya back, activating a kinetic field. "That thing's bending time around its body. We can't just interfere!"
"I wasn't planning to," Maya said grimly, fingers tracing a symbol of protection in the air. "I'm going to redirect the Hollow."
Veyron floated above them, already casting sigils with twisting voidlight. "Then be quick. Kael can hold his own, but not for long. That spear isn't physical—it's rewriting him with every hit."
The Hunter's form blurred again, teleporting behind Kael-X in a flash of inverted time.
But Kael was ready.
He spun and drove a fist into its core, releasing a shockwave of void energy.
The Hunter stumbled.
Kael-X stood tall, breathing hard. "You want a paradox?"
He activated a new glyph burned into his palm—one gifted by Oblivion himself.
"Then deal with every version of me that refused to die."
Time fractured.
Twelve versions of Kael-X burst into reality—each from a different forked timeline, each with their own weapons, skills, and rage.
And they charged together.
The twelve Kael-Xs struck in perfect synchrony, their movements a symphony of chaos born from infinite timelines. One wielded twin shadowblades; another, cloaked in pure lightning, blurred like a thunderclap. A third Kael-X moved with eerie calm, manipulating gravity with every motion. They weren't illusions—they were real, each a version of Kael that had survived differently.
The Hunter staggered back, caught off guard for the first time.
It raised its spear and twisted it mid-air—rewinding a sliver of the present.
Two Kaels vanished.
"Damn it," Elijah muttered. "It can erase possibilities."
"But not all at once," Maya said quickly, her hands glowing as she completed the sigil. "I've redirected part of the Hollow's resonance—binding it to Kael's existence. That means—"
"The Hunter can't erase him without breaking the Hollow itself," Elijah finished, eyes wide.
Veyron laughed darkly. "Nice trick, kids."
The remaining Kael-Xs converged. Two leapt skyward, striking from above. Three struck from different temporal pockets, phasing in and out of slowed reality. One Kael, the original, was already charging a core pulse—pulling raw void energy into his chest, feeding it with rage, loss, and relentless will.
"Now," Kael-X snarled, "let's bend fate until it screams."
The original Kael unleashed the pulse.
A dome of inverted reality expanded outward, absorbing and reversing the Hunter's local time distortions. It froze mid-lunge, paralyzed.
Then the twelve Kaels attacked in unison—blades, fists, and magic slamming into the Hunter's core, each strike cracking its armor and distorting the symbols across its helm.
A flash.
Silence.
Then, a piercing sound—like glass fracturing across dimensions.
The Hunter's mask shattered, and its body convulsed violently before imploding into a flicker of ash and radiant data fragments. A ripple spread through the Hollow Vein, and suddenly everything held still—too still.
Kael-X fell to one knee, all other versions vanishing like mist.
Maya rushed to him, placing a glowing hand on his shoulder. "You alright?"
He looked up, exhausted but defiant. "I bought us time. Not safety."
Veyron floated down, his voice unusually serious. "You didn't just kill a Hunter. You destroyed a stabilizer. The Hollow's going to react."
The ground trembled.
From deeper within the rift, a hollow wail echoed—a cry not of pain, but awakening.
Kael-X rose slowly. "Then we keep moving."
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Next: Chapter 79 – Hollowbirth
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